The New York Times Sunday Magazine published an article “Just One More Game …: Angry birds, Farmville, and Other Hyperaddictive Stupid Games” written by Sam Anderson, a critic and prolific journalist, which shows a real fear from gamifying our society. As an illustration, he uses Nintendo’s game Tetris to relate a paradigm shift that which creates an infinite loop of competition, creating the “gaming addiction.” In addition, he draws a close relationship between simple games, convenience, user-friendliness and instant gratification and, then points out, corporations take advantage of this gaming addiction by inconspicuously trying to control free will by gamification. The author explicitly asserts his fear of gamification but, ultimately, shows evidence of how it could potentially make users more conscious of their cognition. I agree with the author on his viewpoint but disagree at the same time. For instance, gamification does have the power to increase cognition and promote personal growth in areas such as health and education. However, gamification must …show more content…
It is important to realize that games were created so the user could enjoy his or her leisure time, not have their personal data collected and watched for corporate gain. This has the potential to raise real concern about how much and what kind of data is being collected. According to the online article “Data Mining: What is Data Mining?” written by Bill Palace which suggests, “…data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both” (Palace, “Data Mining”). With this in mind, caution should be showed in how data from games is collected and how it
How do we know that mind equals muscle? Athletes must mentally prepare themselves for physical challenges. Athletes must also be strong enough to complete the tasks they mentally choose. Since mind and body are connected, we know you can’t have one without the other!
Using persuasive writing, Wright begins to influence his audience that game play is a beneficial source of entertainment not a wasteful one. Playing video games increases creatively, self esteem and improve problem solving skills of the players. Video games are becoming test runs that appear or feel close to the real thing. Where you can control everything with added effects like magic or future technology. Games have the potential to exceed almost all other forms of entertainment media. They tell stories, play music, challenge us, allow us to instantly communicate and interact with others. Encourage us to create things, connect us to new communities, and let us play with people across the world. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently tangible. According to Wright young children spend their days in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make believe into the real world that they are just beginning to explore and understand. Wright states that games are the result of imagination and that they consist of rules and goals. Generation of teenagers has grown up with different set of games. Teenagers use the scientific method rather than reading the manual first. Games today maybe a person’s only place to express a high-level of creativity and growth. Older generations have a lot of criticisms for games, the games can help a person learn to think on his or her own.
These extremely large data sets may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations relating to human behavior and interaction. These analysesaffect us on day to day basis positively and negatively and the legality of how this information is collected and the laws that apply may be unclear. Both with or without users' knowledge, consumer personal data is collected from every daily, digital activity; from purchases, web searches, amazon searches, browsing history, and phone use. This data is generated, and then downloaded and stored. [15] Companies can then use this data to create "data sets" or large files of users' data to produce customer profiling. This data can also be used by police, the governmental bodies, scientists, businesses, military, and other industries where occasional breaches of data are expected .[16] Breaches and leaks of personal information including phone calls, credit card information, home address, and personal phone numbers are examples of information that is logged and stored by these corporations while making "data sets". Much of this information is being processed and sold to marketers for the purpose of marketing their products. This information is stored digitally and in some cases, regardless of the security of the information being stored, there are risks of unauthorized parties
In “Why Games Are Good For You,” an excerpt from the book Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, the author Steven Johnson defends gaming as a valid form of entertainment against its conventional opponents and delves deep into its benefits. Firstly, Johnson presents the old conventional argument of beneficial reading as opposed to the colossal time-wasting
Our lives have become busier and therefore there is less time for complex gaming. Casual game use is on the rise as such games are simple and can be played quickly (“The Rise and Rise of Casual Gaming,” 2008). Jesse Schell (2010) observes games are becoming an extension of our real life, for example, fitness trackers and Wii fit, ‘brain exercising’ apps to ward off dementia, good driver apps that are provided by car insurance companies, point systems for shopping rewards and weight watchers. We can even compete with others in these games using leader boards. In the future there may be reward systems for brushing your teeth or using public transport (Schell,
Have you ever wondered how so many people can play video games for hours? Or how gamers can connect to people in the “virtual world” and learn life lessons? In the book, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and the article “Becoming Part of Something Bigger Than ourselves” by Jane McGonigal says “the single best way to add meaning to our lives is to connect our daily actions to something bigger than ourselves and the bigger, the better” (446). In 2009, McGonigal’s best video game, SuperBetter, went viral. The popularity from the video game increased gamers to battle health challenges like depression and anxiety. Mcgonigal's video game also increased better communication skills between friends, family,
During Jane McGonagall’s 2010 TED Talk video “Gaming can make a better world”, she states “the average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent ten thousand hours gaming by age 21”. Such numbers alone should pique the interest of every educator in our country. Young people today spend the same amount of time learning at school as they spend gaming (TED Talk, 2010). Many people view video games as fun, exciting, and adventurous outlets where they can escape reality and be creative innovators. As educators, we want our classrooms to accomplish similar outcomes. We want learning to be fun, exciting, and adventurous. We want our learners to be creative, critical-thinking innovators who strive to change the world. This brief dissertation will evaluate the influences gamification can have on teaching and learning, the science behind learner motivation and its connection with gamification, analyze how gamifying supports differentiated ways to teach and learn, and discuss how technologies and gamification are being used to enhance teaching and learning.
Gamification is the new thing, and it will continue to grow and people are going to find more interesting ways to be a part of the bigger picture, it gives an understanding of how to live a healthier and meaningful life by playing a game. Gamification will continue to expand to find innovative way to apply a non-game application to solve problems. It will even enhance a service from a management perspective. Gamification even goes into a deeper learning experience and is a very powerful machine that will even create algorithms that can even help detect and diagnose a disease. 2.
Anderson begins by telling his audience that with the creation of the popular and first Nintendo GameBoy game Tetris, a new tradition begins that he calls “stupid games”. Continuing his critical analyst he pointed out how technology has evolved a lot since Tetris was created and with so did video games leaving our world of today surrounded by what he calls “stupid games”. He talks about how Game-studies scholars have noticed a trend, that video games are often made during a time where they would be socially needed. Examples given by Anderson were, “Monopoly, for
People see games as immature and a waste of time when it is almost the complete opposite. For example, statistically a player has failed 80% of the time to succeed at the trial. That is, these ‘mindless’ games often hide challenging bosses, or frustrating puzzles to have to solve to move on. (Gaming Slacking Stigma) Most of which, are hard but fun. They help the gamer develop quick reflexes and drastically enhances the gamers critical thinking capacity.
“Be a Gamer, Save the World,” written by Jane McGonigal, is an article found in the Norton Reader 14th Edition. Video game critics are often quick to dismiss playing video games as brain numbing and a waste of time. McGonigal challenges critics of video games by discussing the benefits of playing video games. She makes a valid point by stating that video games make players more optimistic and help create better social bonds. These emotions can encourage people to desire working for the betterment of the world. McGonigal believes we can solve some of the world’s most difficult issues with the use of video games. The author makes a valid point, especially considering the advancements in technology and the
With the increased and widespread use of technologies, interest in data mining has increased rapidly. Companies are now utilized data mining techniques to exam their database looking for trends, relationships, and outcomes to enhance their overall operations and discover new patterns that may allow them to better serve their customers. Data mining provides numerous benefits to businesses, government, society as well as individual persons. However, like many technologies, there are negative things that caused by data mining such as invasion of privacy right. This paper tries to explore the advantages as well as the disadvantages of data mining. In addition, the ethical and global issues regarding the use of data mining
Children’s engagement in and motivation by video games is commonly observed by parents and teachers. The Joan Ganz Cooney Foundation conducted a survey of 505 in-service United States teachers that use digital games in their K-8 classrooms (Takeuchi & Vaala, 2014). Regarding low performing students seventy percent of the teachers agreed that digital gaming improved motivation and engagement (Takeuchi & Vaala, 2014). The motivation and engagement of games exhibited in both adults and children has been employed by marketing firms to encourage consumers to engage in sustained use of products such as social networking sites, fitness bands, and consumer data collection apps. This method has been coined gamification. The Oxford English Dictionary defines gamification as “the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity,
Many young children and teenagers have heard their mother’s incessant plead to get away from the screen and to go outside or pick up a book for once instead. The urge to play “just one more level” before starting that homework or doing those chores can be quite distracting. But are video games really as awful as Mom exclaims or as brutal as those TV ads depict? It turns out that video games can have a strong impact on participants’ lives in both positive as well as negative ways.
A study done at Stanford in 1997 found that the games were extremely effective. Brown et. al (1997) found that diabetic children who played the “Packy and Marlon” game were four times less likely (77% decrease) to require urgent health care visits than those who played a different game. The conclusions here suggest that well-designed video games can be highly appealing and motivating learning environments for players. In these virtual worlds, players have access to unlimited opportunities to rehearse skills, experience social support (between peers who also played the game as well as the game characters themselves), actively obtain and use information, and receive immediate feedback on their performance. Essentially it is a virtual world that allows for cognitive social learning to occur.